Rehearsals for a Revolution

In five compelling portraits of people close to her heart, Iranian filmmaker and actor Pegah Ahangarani interweaves her life story with that of Iran. From the courageous work of her father, who documented the 1979 revolution on 8mm film, to her own phone recordings of the protests in 2009 and the recent, raw footage of the streets of Tehran during the war that broke out this year, each chapter—about her father, her uncle, a beloved teacher, a close friend, and finally her newborn daughter—represents a generation resisting the regime. The film moves constantly between hope and despair.

Rehearsals for a Revolution premiered at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Documentary (Golden Eye/L’Oeil d’Or). As in her earlier short essay films (including I Am Trying to Remember and My Father), she interweaves a colorful array of archival material from the family album with media clips, newspaper reports, and street footage. Together, the portraits form a powerful chronicle of popular resistance, with glimmers of hope for a new revolution.